This is what they like to call “live-blogging”. I call it “I have nothing else to do in the Kansas City Airport because my United flight back to Dulles was delayed four hours”. That is not a typo. FOUR HOURS. There are only so many pages I can read of celebrity magazines The Economist before I get bored and need to see what’s been happening on the Interwebs since I’ve been offline the past five days.

I traveled to St. Joseph, MO, a small city near Kansas City, to visit The Princess’ family and celebrate the Christian Hanukkah known as Christmas. It’s only the third Christmas I have ever celebrated in my life (my second in St. Joe) and it is a fun time each and every time.

From what I can tell, Christmas involves a lot of snow, gobs of ham, turkey, and biscuits and gravy, awkward conversations with family members you barely remember, a 24-hour A Christmas Story marathon on TBS, sibling bickering, a shitload of beautifully wrapped presents, watching family members dance to Soulja Boy, and the inevitable passive-aggressive prying from The Princess’ mom over when exactly we’re going to make her a grandma.

Our moms, though they have never met, recently became BFFs. They e-mail each other nearly every day and hatch plots to make us procreate. My mom has told me she doesn’t even care anymore about marriage, she just wants an expensive and ungrateful pooping/crying organism to dote over. I know we are not the only ones who feel . I usually try to distract the moms’ not-so-subtle pleas by reminding them they have other children to harass.

It is an odd feeling returning home (in 3 1/2 hours) after hanging out for nearly a week in your PJs and feeling warm and toasty a thousand miles away from your real life and even more real responsibilities. The Princess, after dropping me off at the airport and driving into the city with her dad, offered to come back to the airport to retrieve me. I told her that would be silly and that I’d prefer hanging out at the airport anyway.

I haven’t really missed checking my e-mail or blog or fantasy hockey team. In fact, I realized how truly insignificant these Web-based diversions really are. Still, it’s just nice to get some time alone to kick back at the airport, where I don’t know anyone and I can people watch and Web surf uninterrupted.

Of course, it’s not exactly like being at home. Though I appreciate KCI’s free Wi-Fi service, the airport won’t let me access certain sites. What Would Tyler Durden Do?, the male version of Pink is the New Blog, “has been categorized as Pornography”. Maybe it’s because it shows fake naked photos of Hayden Panettiere or maybe it’s because the site is obsessed with Jessica Alba’s breasts (who isn’t?).

In any case, I’m sure I have been flagged as a pervert and am being tracked online as we speak. I’m no computer expert, so if that is possible and KCI authorities are watching my Web surfing activities, I just want to say I love your small-as-shit airport and thanks for the free Interweb service. No perverts here.

Looks like I have a lot of blogs to catch up on and a lot of weird-looking people to watch here at the airport. Maybe I’ll head down to the bar and ask Chiefs fans why their team sucks, or maybe I’ll head to the CNBC shop and pick out the new issue of Esquire. Oh, look, there’s a little boy throwing a tantrum! I hope he’s on my flight.

There’s also a Cinnabon store here in case I feel like spending my remaining time here in the airport shitter. I’m sure they have Wi-Fi in there, too.

Three hours to go…

PHOTO CREDIT

On the 19th night of Hanukkah last Friday night. a couple of Jews stood on the Birchmere stage and opened their live performance with the following lyrics:

“I’ve got two pubic hairs and a three-piece suit, today I am a man.”

This song about a boy’s Bar Mitzvah was a harbinger of things to come for Good for the Jews, a music/comedy duo who last Friday night shocked and entertained a concert hall of Sabbath-ditching Jews by riffing on the Holocaust, joking about Jewish stereotypes, and singing about how Members of the Tribe spend Christmas.

“Did anyone come here expecting to see Horah dancing?” warned Rob Tannenbaum, who along with friend David Fagin makes up the group Good for the Jews. “Or did you come to hear funny and sometimes disgusting music?”

I heard about Good for the Jews after reading an artcile about them in the . Intrigued, I listened to their hilariously written songs on their and asked Tannenbaum if I could come see their show.

He left me two tickets at will call.

Good for the Jews is a part music, part comedy act that spent the last weekend before Christmas on the penultimate stop of their 13-city “Putting the Ha! in Hanukkah” tour.

A few minutes before the show started, The Princess and I met Tannenbaum at our table as I ate the Jewiest food I could order from the Birchmere menu: the Toasted Smoked Corned Beef Reuben. Tannebaum and I talked about me having a shiksa girlfriend, how “Jewy” we perceived the audience was, and about the lone Nazi who “protested” at their show in San Francisco earlier this month.

I asked him about the origins of his band’s name. Tannenabum leaned in and admitted what felt like a private confession: “I’m not even sure that we are good for the Jews.”

This is the paradox of Good for the Jews’ comedy: they ridicule stereotypes non-Jews have of us while also mocking our culture themselves. For example, they perform songs titled “They Tried to Kill Us”, a purposefully disjointed history lesson set to catchy pop-rock music, but also satirical songs like “Ruben the Hook-Nosed Reindeer”.

The idea of a “Jewish sense of humor” as being a shared experience borne out of struggle is a well-known, albeit potentially spurious, idea. In the classic “anti-Dentite” Seinfeld episode, newly converted Jew Tim Watley tells Jerry, “It’s our sense of humor that has sustained us as a people for 4,000 years.”

“Five thousand…” Seinfeld replies.

“Five thousand! Even better!”

This self-deprecating absurdity is prevalant in the tongue-in-cheek manner Tannenbaum and Fagin (a gifted professional musician who performs all the guitar work) sing their songs and interact with the crowd. Tannenbaum unites the audience early by finding a combined experience — none of us mostly Reform Jews are home on this Friday night observing the Jewish Sabbath.

“We’re not Shomer Shabbos,” Tannebaum admits. “Obviously, neither are you guys.”

Tannenbaum carries himself on a stage much like a rabbinical master of ceremonies. Presiding over his “synagogue”, he wears a burgundy blazer over a powder-blue ruffled tuxedo shirt and sips delicately from a glass of red wine.

He spends much of his time making scoffing at himself and Fagin, the audience, and his own religion. Though he is confident with his material, it sometimes seems that even he is not sure whether his comedy will hit the right chord.

For example, while discussing possible alternatives for band names he and Fagin considered before settling on Good for the Jews, he mentions the option Start Spreading the Jews. But, he said, “it sounded too much like a brand of Nazi peanut butter.”

The audience groans.

“It was 60 years ago,” he reminds us, “too soon?”

“Yes,” shouts one brave soul.

Yes, Good for the Jews’ songs are rife with lyrics that would make Sarah Silverman proud (“They tried to kill us, we survived, let’s eat, they tried to kill us, we were faster on our feet, and we knew how to resist ’cause we rented Schindler’s List…”.

But they also feel like inside jokes that we are in on because of our shared culture.

The song “Jews for Jesus” is an amusing tirade aimed at the heavily reviled Christian sect. The song serves as a reminder of the religious hieracrhy as Tannenbaum reminds the audience: “Orthodox Jews look down on Conservative Jews for not being observant enough. Conservative Jews look down on Reform Jews for not being pious enough. And Reform Jews look down on Orthodox Jews, for not showering enough.”

But we all look down on Jews for Jesus, the incorrectly named, pamphlet-distributing cult. Tannenbaum and Fagin eviscerate them in the song’s chorus:

“Jews for Jesus, Jews for Jesus…It’s time for you to learn about the Holocaust, I’d really like to nail you to the cross.”

On Friday night, this line stunned the audience — a mixture of families, couples, older Jews, and ever children — which cheered some of the song’s tamer lines. But this is what makes Good for the Jews brilliant. They push the discomfort level while simultaneously empowering the audience. They deride Jewish stereotypes yet feel free to mock them themselves.

Before singing “JDate”, for example, Tannebaum uses the stage to discuss his problems with women. He tells us that his family got him a membership to the online Jewish dating web site and met a nice Jewish girl.

“I knew she was Jewish,” he announces, “because she licked my balls right to left.”

The subversive Good for the Jews’ tour is, sadly, done. That doesn’t mean you are farkakt. To hear four of their more popular songs on MySpace, click . For more information, visit their Web site. And to follow their tour diary on Jewcy.com, click HERE.

There is something about me that even my best friends don’t know: I LOVE Capri Sun.

Seriously. I practically inhale it. I’m the fucking Takeru Kobayashi of drinking Capri Sun. It takes me about 5 seconds to straw-pierce that silver pouch and drink all 6.75 fluid ounces of tropical goodness. I usually cap this act of physical prowess by crushing the pouch in my bare hand and throwing it on the ground like a Russian weightlifter dropping 100-pound barbells.

I often have wondered how many Capri Suns I could finish in 10 minutes. This is the curse of my gender: wondering if we can accomplish physically taxing ordeals just to see if we can. It’s how keg stands and the started. And it’s how sports were probably invented.

Guy 1: I wonder if I can punch this guy as hard as possible until he fell down?
Guy 2: You should call it boxing.

It’s also how the MTV show “Jackass” probably started. A bunch of guys wondered how much physical pain they could withstand for the entertainment of their friends. It was like “Mythbusters” for idiots. One question they never solved, though, was one that many guys have pondered since the dawn of time:

How many five-year-olds could you take in a fight?

I know I’ve wondered this. Luckily, there is a that answers that very question, calculating it based on your size, morals, and fighting history. I am a bit ashamed to say that I could only take on 16 of these little fuckers. This might sound like a lot of five-year-old kids to fight at once, but trust me, it’s not.

16

The quiz doesn’t ask a lot of intangibles, like if I can pick one up by the ankles and swing him around like a baseball bat. But it does set some ground rules:

* You are in an enclosed area roughly the size of a basketball court
* There are no weapons or foreign objects
* Everyone is wearing a cup (so no kicks to the groin)
* The children are merciless and will show no fear
* If a child is knocked unconscious, he is “out.” The same goes for you.

The quiz also doesn’t consider these kids’ collective attention spans. Most of them would probably start mining for nose gold or start bawling once took their away. Others could easily be distracted with an easy magic trick or a cute puppy.

I used to work as a camp counselor during my college summers and the privileged five-year-olds I worked with were some of the whiniest little bitches I’ve ever met. “I’m hot!” they’d complain, or “Timmy got more punch than me!”, or “Why are you hitting on my mom, Arjewtino?”

As I see it, there really are only five ways I couldn’t beat up more five-year-olds:

1. My stamina.
2. I forget how to give wedgies.
3. The kids are homeless South Americans.
4. The kids are related to me.
5. The kids are zombies.

If you take the , let me know how many five-year-olds you could fight at once. Unless the number is higher than 16. Then I’ll just feel bad.

When I was a waiter an at Argentine restaurant in Studio City, I once served Alfonso Ribeiro, the little dude who played Carlton on “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”. I can call him “little” because he was shorter than me and had a hot-ass girlfriend, which was either ridiculously unfair or gave short guys everywhere a measure of hope.

Other than ordering the Pollo Picante and giving me a slightly above-average tip, Carlton’s visit was unmemorable (unlike seeing Wayne Brady the next day).

Will Smith was not with him that day. You know why? Because the Fresh Prince was busy transforming himself into a box office powerhouse. In case you don’t have a TV or have disabled pop-up ads on your browser, you might have heard that his latest movie, I Am Legend, broke his box office record over the weekend, opening with a take of more than $77 million. His previous record was his $62 million opening weekend for I, Robot.

Many people were surprised by 28 Days Later’s I Am Legend’s record-setting opening. It reportedly doubled industry-wide expectations.

But to me, who was raised near the glitz of Hollywood in the glamorous San Fernando Valley (represent), it is obvious why Will Smith continues to attract all demographics to his movies. His formula is so simple yet so elusive. Are you ready for this? Pay attention:

He uses soliloquacious pronouns in his movie titles.

I know, I know, you probably wish you had a nickel for everytime someone argued that point. But let me argue it once more. The first-person, singular personal pronoun “I” has appeared in Big Willy’s top two opening weekend movies of all time. This might seem like a slight coincidence to the untrained Hollywood observer. But the magical pronoun has also appeared in eight of his eponymous TV show’s episodes. Check it:

I, Done: Part 1
I, Done: Part 2
I, Stank Hole in One
I, Stank Horse
I, Whoops, There It Is
I, Bowl Buster
I, Clownius
I, Ooh, Baby, Baby

Do you think Smith’s brilliant use of this pronoun stops merely at his films and movies? Try again. Remember his 1989 hit, “I Think I Can Beat Mike Tyson”? It’s not an “I, Pronoun” dealio but it does start with “I”. He’s a fucking pronoun-using genius.

Sure, Smith is known for gettin’ jiggy wit’ even bigger movies like Independence Day and Men in Black, movies that didn’t start with “I”. But imagine how much BIGGER his movies would have been if he had affixed the pronoun to his movie titles. I, Ali, would have kicked more ass and I, Wild Wild West, might have grossed more than just $113 million. Hell, even “I, Parents Just Don’t Understand” would have won more than just one Grammy award.

I think I’m going to follow Will Smith’s lead and change my blog name to I, Arjewtino, and laugh maniacally as all the millions start pouring in.

Now all I need is charisma, acting skills, and the ability to actually rap and do the hippity-hop.

When I get sick, I act like a big baby. I understand this about myself. But when The Princess gets sick, it’s much, much worse. Because when she gets sick, the whole system breaks down.

This “broken system” is the reason why on Sunday evening, I had to go to Bath and Body Works. Shopping for things that “smell nice” or “feel good” is strictly a girlfriend-only errand. I’m more of a shopping for things that “sound cool” or “look awesome” kind of guy. But with The Princess incapacitated by a bad case of the tummy ache, the onus of buying presents for these two middle school kids we sponsored for Christmas fell on me.

We had to buy each of them — a boy and a girl — a $25 present. This meant that I had to venture out — alone — to Bath and Body Works, a girly mecca of lotions and fragrances to buy a gift basket for a 13-year-old girl I knew nothing about. As a result, I had the funniest experience I’ve ever had at Bath and Body.

(I should say “funny” rather than “funniest” since that implies I have had enough funny experiences there for me to rank them.)

I walked into the store in the Prince George’s Plaza and instantly felt terrified. Female shoppers were everywhere, rummaging through a variety of mutli-colored bath stuff and perfume-scented products that do nothing more than attack all my senses at once, and not in a good way.

When I perform my all-American duty of consumer shopping, typically the most annoying five words I hear are the following:

“Can I help you, sir?”

Fuck no! I often think to myself. I consider myself an independent shopper who doesn’t need the assistance of someone who would rather not be talking to me. But this time, I walked right up to the first Bath and Body employee I saw and asked for her help. I explained that I needed a $25 gift basket for a teenage girl and that I would buy whatever she considered appropriate.

She showed me one that had three bottles of vanilla-scented crap and something called a loofah. I pointed to a different one that had a candle in it and said that looked nice. She advised against it. Repeatedly.

Employee: “No, you shouldn’t get that one, it has a candle.”

Arjewtino: “But it looks like a better gift, I think.”

Employee: “No, it’s more for adults, let her stay a kid a bit longer.”

Arjewtino: “Why? Is a candle an adult thing?”

Employee: “What’s a 13-year-old girl going to do with a candle?”

Arjewtino: “I don’t know, what’s a grown woman going to do with a candle?”

For the next five seconds, I thought she was going to slap me upside the head. She stared at me as if to say, “You ignorant motherfucker.” I laughed awkwardly to break the silence and added, “Then again, I’ve never been a 13-year-old girl. Heh. Heh.” I’m a social genius.

I asked to see more gift baskets and she showed me some at a different table. We looked around and finally agreed on a basket that had some sort of “Sweet Pea” theme and a penguin hand scrubber thing. She finally asked me who I was shopping for and I told her about the middle school kids.

Arjewtino: “After this, I’m going to Target to buy something for the boy.”

Employee: “What are you getting him?”

Arjewtino: “I have no idea, I’m trying to think of what I would have liked when I was 13.”

Employee: “Well, what did you like?”

Arjewtino: “Girls.”

Employee: “You could always get him a girl.”

Arjewtino: “But then I’d be his pimp.”

Proud of my ability to shop for a teenage girl, I took my basket of stuff and penguin to the register. The checkout chick, a young, attractive woman with an outgoing personality, asked if she could interest me in some last-minute impulse buys. I shot down each of her offers.

Checkout chick: “You sure you don’t want anything else?”

Arjewtino: “No thanks, I’m good.”

Checkout chick:“You just wanted to see me smile.”

I laughed and felt flattered at what I realized was her flirting with me. I know how hot I can look when I’m holding moisturizers. Then again, maybe she was just trying to sell me more stuff I didn’t need, like a stripper who makes you feel special but then asks you to buy her a drink.

At the end of the transaction, she asked me for my home number.

Arjewtino: “My what?”

Checkout chick:“Your telephone number.”

Why did she want this? I thought. I wasn’t buying batteries in Radio Shack and the purchase was already complete.

Arjewtino: “Why do you need my phone number?”

Checkout chick:“We send out special discount coupons.”

Over the phone? I thought. How is that possible? Whatever. I gave her my number. Then, she leaned closer to me.

Checkout chick:“Also, it’s how I meet men.”

I laughed.

Arjewtino: “Ok, but if you call and my girlfriend picks up, hang up.”

Checkout chick:“Don’t worry, I’ll call late.”

See what I mean? The whole system broke down.

SCROLL DOWN TO VOTE.

Apologies to my best friend Blue for once again mentioning Movember (”Get over it, it’s done. If you mention Movember one more time I’m going to stop reading your blog.”), but the idea of people growing bodily humor for charity came up again over the weekend.

Cagey and The Princess had, at the beginning of Movember, “threatened” to grow out their leg hair as some sort of response to my Movember team’s efforts to grow ridiculous-looking mustaches. I effectively told them I didn’t give a shit and that they should knock themselves out. Of course, female vanity triumphed over evil and they continued their leg shaving schedules.

But on Saturday night, while imbibing many beers at Bedrock in celebration of Baby Bien’s and INPY’s combination birthday, the idea of women growing out their hair for charity came up again. I don’t even know who brought it up (probably me) but we agreed that if there were to be such a month-long event, it would be in October. And they would have to grow out their pubic hair.

Everyone was in favor of creating this charity event. If a bunch of Aussies can concoct Movember and raise millions of dollars worldwide (our team raised $4,100), then why can’t women show off their short and curlies?

The only thing we couldn’t all agree on was what to call it. Many ideas were offered but little consensus was reached. I have my own favorite but there were so many good choices. So I’m opening it up to the blogosphere to vote on what to call the month in which women grow their pubic hair for charity:

PHOTO CREDIT

You know that feeling you get when you’re watching Back to the Future for the 283rd time and you think to yourself, This is the time when Marty won’t get beat up by Biff ? But it never is, the movie always — obviously — goes the same way every time you watch it.

That’s how I feel about the Mitchell Report. And no matter which way I read it, Paul Lo Duca is still a cheating sack of shit.

Of all the players implicated in the report, the most shocking to me was Lo Duca, my favorite player on the Dodgers during his 7 years with the ballclub. The All-Star catcher was an amazing example to me, in an era of premature cynicism, of what a real ballplayer was supposed to be like. He played with more heart and determination with a body that had far less natural talent than his peers than anyone I had ever seen in my lifetime.

I remember once reading a quote of his after a Dodgers’ win in which he had finished 0 for 5 — yet he was the happiest player on the team. He told the reporter that he’d rather go 0-fer and his team win than bat 4 for 4 and lose.

So when I saw his name on the list of players who used steroids and/or HGH, I was nothing short of heartbroken. My best friend Blue, also a huge Dodgers fan who was actually AT the Kirk Gibson game in 1988, said he though Eric Gagne’s inclusion was far more damaging. Gagne, he argued, was a record-setting Cy Young winner, making his accomplishments on the field more tainted than those of Lo Duca’s.

I see his logic. And it makes sense. But no one ever thought of Gagne as the team leader, the one you could point to and say, “There goes a real Dodger.” Lo Duca transcended his slightly above-average stats and competent play behind the plate. He was a Dodger.

The Mitchell Report, which you can read in its entirety here, is nothing short of sensational. The big name players are couched by players whose names I haven’t heard in years (nut case Chuck Knobloch) as well as names I’ve never heard of (who the fuck is Bart Miadich?).

The biggest surprises to me, though, were the inclusion of Lenny Dykstra and the fact that Brady Anderson was not implicated. Anderson went from smacking 16 HRs in 1995 with the Orioles to belting an jaw-dropping 50 the following year. He hit more than 20 only once more in his career. I’m sure it was those Flintstones vitamins he was ingesting.

Lo Duca, such a sharp catcher who could handle a pitching staff probably better than my current favorite Dodger Russel Martin, was stupid enough to buy $9,600 worth of human growth hormones using personal checks, according to the report. The man also wrote a personal note — on Dodgers letterhead — to key witness Kirk Radomski. I’ve learned better counter-crime detection strategies watching David Caruso on CSI: Miami.

I was excited when news came out this week Lo Duca had signed with the Nats, that I was going to watch him play next season. These revelations aren’t exactly Black Sox territory, but they sure as hell make it feel like 1994 all over again.

PHOTO CREDIT

UPDATE: Someone found this blog post today by performing the following search:

Eleven days removed from Movember and the namesake of our mustache-growing/ass cancer-beating team — Alex Trebek — has had a heart attack.

The longtime host of Jeopardy! was admitted to an LA hospital on Monday night with a “minor” heart attack. I know there is a medical explanation for suffering a heart attack of varying degrees, but saying he had a “minor” one is like saying he only got punched in the nutsack by a 10-year-old. Still sucks, man.

There are many reasons why this 67-year-old man might have a heart attack. Bad diet? History of heart disease? when you think the cameras aren’t rolling? I don’t know. To me, though, there’s only one reason why Alex’s ticker “minorly” gave out:

My Movember team members prematurely shaved their mustaches.

I apologize, Alex. I’m truly sorry. I’m sorry the Committee for the Restoration of Trebek’s Upper Lip Hair let you down. I’m sorry we got rid of these annoying soup-straining mouth slugs the very moment we could.

I know what people will say. That I’m a superstitious moron who seemingly hasn’t realized that you no longer have a mustache. That apologizing to you for not having one is like apologizing to Jesus for me being Jewish.

I know you no longer have a mustache. But my Movember bros and I named our team after your legacy. We raised $4,100 to fight prostate cancer while taking a chance of not getting laid for a month. By turning our backs on our month-long effort, though, we showed only our severe callousness. We should have kept these ’staches growing.

I hope you recover soon, Alex. I hope you continue being the pretentious quiz show host I watch every night when I don’t have to stay late at work. If it makes you feel any better, my mustache has been growing back. Sure, I also have a goatee and it doesn’t look half as great as yours once did, but I’m doing my best, Giorgi Suka-Alex Trebek.

If you don’t do it for us, do it for Ken Jennings. That millionaire bastard needs something to live for.

Photo credit

If there is one thing in this world that I love it is eating bread in a restaurant.

A couple of weekends ago, I went to an Italian restaurant for dinner with some friends. The first thing I asked for, even before the menus, was a basket of bread. I had eye-scanned the joint upon sitting down and noticed other tables had bread. Free bread. On their tables. So I wanted a basket. Then I wanted another one. And another.

I asked the waiter for – and received – five bread baskets during dinner. The thing is, why do I love bread so much when I go out to eat? It’s not like I don’t have bread at home. I have plenty of bread. Bagels, pita bread, wheat bread, pumpernickel.

But when I go out, I turn into Teen Wolf hooked on bread.

“Bread? They have bread? Give me some bread! You have any more bread? Give me five motherfucking baskets of bread!”

The Princess, though, always gives me the “Don’t fill up on bread” speech. Why shouldn’t I have as much bread as I want? It’s free. And I’ll still eat my dinner. I’m paying for it, after all. Maybe they don’t eat restaurant bread in her home state of Missouri, I don’t know. But that is a fundamental difference between me and my Midwestern girlfriend.

You know what else is a fundamental difference? Sports. Specifically, college football. She couldn’t care less about it. When her alma mater Mizzou reached the number one ranking in the nation recently, I was more excited than she was. Hell, had a shit freak about it (and deservedly so).

“Do you understand how big this is?” I asked her.

Princess: “No.”

Arjewtino: “It’s huge. They haven’t been number one since 1960.”

Princess: “I don’t care.”

Arjewtino: “How can you not care? I would kill for UCLA to be number one and have a shot at the national championship. It upsets me that you don’t appreciate it.”

Princess: “Is Project Runway on?”

One of the first conversations The Princess and I had when we first met was about Mizzou. She told me she graduated from there and I instantly launched into my proud diatribe of UCLA guard Tyus Edney going coast-to-coast against her school in the 1995 March Madness tournament.

She looked at me like I had bragged about my ability to do simple arithmetic at the speed of light.

But some people, I suppose, just don’t care about sports. I don’t know who these people are and for the most part I don’t want to know. As long as they don’t stop me from watching/following/caring/obsessing about my sports teams, they can live their own warped and empty lives.

But the reason we as people love sports and root for our teams – teams to which we don’t even belong — is a very interesting one when you think about it.

From a psychological standpoint, it is in our nature to need an enemy, an opponent which a group or team can all rally against. We need a clear battle between a perceived good and evil. From an evolutionary standpoint, we cheer and wear our team’s colors because we needed to band together as if we were going to defeat woolly mammoths and saber tooth tigers.

Sports fans understand the joy of a triumph and the heartbreak of defeat like it’s a matter of life and death. We do so because for our ancestors, it really was about life and death. The closer we bond together against an enemy, the more likely we are to survive and pass on our genes.

So I suppose I understand why to The Princess it’s not important, but that bonding with her friends over a nesting activity – like her book club or pillow fighting league – is.

Yes, I suppose I do understand. Still, it was pretty awesome when after shaking my head at her for not getting the full extent of Mizzou’s number one ranking, she turned to me and asked me this:

Princess: “We beat KU, though, right?”

Arjewtino: “Uh, yeah.”

Princess: “Good. I hate KU.”

There’s hope for her yet.

My friend MJ sent me an e-mail last week in which she lambasted her favorite show, Grey’s Anatomy, for the disappointing season finale:

I think i am going to strike against the writers’ strike by watching more TV than ever now. Some people just shouldn’t be allowed to strike and the Grey’s Anatomy writers are included. Not to mention maybe they would be getting paid more if they wrote better episodes instead of the crap ones of this season…

Disappointing season finales seem to have been the norm this year. Last Friday night’s blogger happy hour season finale, though, lived up to the hype. As always, we met up with old blog friends and were introduced to several cool newbies (I’m looking at you, and ).

I started the night by reuniting at the Sculpture Garden with friends from my last job for our Second Annual Ice Skating trip. Last year, Brewies Chewies and I raced from one side of the rink to the other. I think I won, but we’ll never know since BC tripped 10 feet from the finish line and took a header into our friend Chosang’s ice skate. He split his head open, suffered a mild concussion, and started to ask why some leprechaun was after his lucky charms.

This time, there were no ambulances called but we were reprimanded by rink personnel for doing a conga line, taking photos on the ice, and generally having too much fun, which is apparently against the rules.

Afterward, we all went to the Four Fields (it’ll always be the 4 P’s to me) and had a bloggety time. Thanks to my awesome co-hosts for an outstanding night out, which was capped with me staying up until 3am schooling Baby Bien at Wii.

Front row: , Me, , Kassy K;
Back row: INPY, Roissy.

Also, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, I redesigned my blog theme. I loved my previous theme (thanks, Chris Pearson) but I felt it was time for a change. Hope you guys like it, because even if you don’t, I’m not changing it. Here’s one last look at my old theme:

UPDATE:

Fixed my theme problems. Sorry, Roosh, the alphabetical listing remains. Thanks to all who wrote me for your help troubleshooting. In the end, it was something stupidly small. Figures.